


The Twelfth of Never

by Sneaky_WitchThief



Series: I'll Never Be Free [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Grief/Mourning, One Shot, POV First Person, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-06 20:22:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16394453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sneaky_WitchThief/pseuds/Sneaky_WitchThief
Summary: An unlabeled holotape found in a Third Rail trash can.( A short look into MacCready's past set in the world of my fic "It Had To Be You". )





	The Twelfth of Never

**Author's Note:**

> In Chapter 4 of It Had To Be You, MacCready states that he's had run-ins with the Brotherhood before. I wanted to expand on that a little.
> 
> ***** TW: consult end notes *****

_Now for all you Johnny Mathis fans out there in the Capital Wasteland, playing ‘til forever, it’s The Twelfth of Never._

  
Even now, Three Dog’s still running Galaxy News Radio.

Him and his damn— dang Brotherhood goons. They’ve got DC in a chokehold and its even got most of the mercs spooked. The ones that have a shred of a soul, anyway. After the clean water started flowing it was good for a while, but now. Now that the Brotherhood’s got its shit— crap together, they took back everything they promised, and then some. It was all some ploy, I guess, to get us wastelanders in line.

Even Little Lamplight hadn’t been entirely immune to that.

That funny mungo who passed through Little Lamplight never came back, now that I think about it. Said I looked like her butt and insulted my mom, even with my rifle pointed right between her eyes. Balls of brass. Last I heard of her, though, she got herself killed to get the Brotherhood’s little project up and running. Used her all up too. She was our friend, she had saved some of the kids. Hearing she helped the Brotherhood, that mungo, our mungo, well. We were a bit friendlier to mungos in steel after that. We didn’t just outright shoot them like we damn right— like we definitely should have. Lucy even gave them some of our fungus for their drugs and medicines. It was good for a while. Life was good, if you can believe it.

Then Lucy and I got big. Didn’t matter that I had made Little Lamplight what it was. Rules were rules, even for the mayor.

Big Town was a mess when we got there. Our kids who got big, well, they had been easy pickings for raiders and slavers and muties. Our mungo helped them out a bit, so they survived, at least. We were far enough from DC that we didn’t feel what happened right away. It was good for a while. I found work to support me and Lucy guarding caravans. Got good caps to buy food and Brotherhood Aqua Pura. Better guns for our big kids in Big Town. Funny, how I still think of them as kids. Most were older than me and Lucy, but still. I had been their Mayor and I had done well by them. They were good kids, and they were mine. So I did my all to keep doing that.

I took different jobs, a bit shadier and some a bit less moral, but hey. I had a wife to feed and my own stomach to fill, don’t judge me. Lucy kept doctoring for Big Town, even helped travelers and merchants with their brahmin even though she didn’t know a thing about them. Didn’t stop her from learning. She wanted to help. All the time, mothering anyone and everyone and just being so damn— dang— so dang kind. And the world ain’t kind to kind people.

And true to fashion, the world went and made her an actual mother.

 _You ask me how much I need you, must I explain?_  
_I need you, oh my darling, like roses need rain_

I didn’t know quite what to think when she told me. I still hadn’t even told her what I was actually doing on all those long jobs in the Capital Wasteland. I told her I was a soldier. I couldn’t tell her that I was a hired gun for half a dozen merc groups, taking and stealing and killing to put bread on the table. I don’t know why, I had done worse to protect Little Lamplight when I was mayor and she hadn’t batted an eye then. But now, married to a girl I didn’t deserve and now to be the father of her child— a father! The words would just catch in my throat and choke the courage straight out of me. So I’d slink off to another job or some other thing. Anything to distract me from the thought of actually being a father, I guess. The thought of it all terrified me.

When Duncan was finally born, happy and healthy, well. I was more scared than ever. He was this tiny and delicate thing, beautiful and perfect, a miracle, and me. Me, his merc daddy and his mother who knew fuck-all, er, nothing about it all, I wondered what on earth I had done to deserve him. At first, I felt like I didn’t. I didn’t spend a lot of time in Big Town, or at the homestead we built together some years later. There were always more jobs to take and more caps to make. Looking back I have no clue why Lucy decided to stay with me, but for some reason she stayed. She stayed and raised our son, built our home, and loved me.

And I was there for almost none of it.

I didn’t see my son’s first steps or hear his first words, and at the time I told myself I didn’t care. I was making sure we survived and I was providing for them, that was enough. Jeez, I remember now Lucy playing with him, he was two, I think. He was smashing together some blocks she had whittled him, she sneaking glances at me as she picked up another of his messes. And during it all I was pouring over some new rifle or loading pistols. I don’t remember that anymore, but I thought it was important at the time, I think. A soldier, I told her I was, gunning for the Brotherhood. They were the good guys, I would lie to her, we’re making the Wasteland a better place. And at that she would smile and tell me she was proud of me. I hated hearing it every time but, hey, if it kept up the lie it was good enough for me. I remember the guns, Lucy walking up to me and wrapping her arms around my neck, settling her head next to mine.

She told me that she’d be having another.

And I remember being, of all things, mad at her. Wasn’t one kid enough for her, I had wondered, as if it had been in her control or something. I was having enough trouble even being able to look at Duncan, being what I was and how I was, I was a pretty shit— no, I think I’ll say it. I was a pretty shit father and husband, then. Having two kids with a shit father seemed a bit much, and to me then, well. Might as well have been the end of the world for me.

So I did what I was best at, lied about having to do a job or something and split. I think that was my first time to the Commonwealth, after she told me. Place was almost sh— crappier than the Capital Wasteland, if you could believe it. Good bar in Goodneighbor to drink away my sorrows, though. Spent all the caps I would have earned that job drinking at that bar.

When I came back Lucy was bigger then, and Duncan was too. They were both so beautiful, waving at me from behind the rows of razorgrain, Duncan running to catch me around my knees. Daddy, daddy, he was nearly screaming his joy. That smile, that f— that freaking smile on his face, every time he saw me. Breaks my heart even thinking about it, now. Especially now.

Lucy pulled me aside that night and told me she was getting lonely. Didn’t we have enough to get by now? Couldn’t we settle down now, raise our children?

God, I loved them so much, but at the time, hell if I knew it. All I could think about was all the danger around the corner and the caps we needed to stay alive. I ran on that, I had to. I couldn’t handle being a husband, a father. Shooting, stealing, killing — that was what I knew. What I know. So I kept doing that. I brushed her off, telling her raiders and slavers didn’t just stop and settle down. I had to keep working, getting caps, soldiering as I told her. Doing my part and fighting the goddamn Good Fight. More lies to keep her happy, to keep her from knowing who I really was. And it worked for a while.

 _You ask how long I'll love you, I'll tell you true_  
_Until the Twelfth of Never, I'll still be loving you_

She was pretty well along with our second when the Aqua Pura stopped flowing.

Of course, it still was here and there, say through my merc contacts — but the merchants weren’t carrying it anymore. They couldn’t, they would tell me, the Brotherhood wasn’t giving it freely anymore, and what remained of the purified Potomac was swarming with the horrors of the Wasteland. They had quit their patrols outside of DC. Merchants couldn’t even buy the stuff, they had to brave muties and ants and ferals for it at the river. And of course none of them did. I had nearly blown one of their heads off, the a fu— freaking coward. I needed the stuff for Lucy. She had told me children weren’t easy to have here in the Wasteland, what with all the radiation and the disease and the fighting. So I only ever got the best for her. For our kid. She almost lost Duncan once when I couldn’t get any of the good stuff. Got so sick she couldn’t even stand, and then the bleeding...

Ever since, only Aqua Pura would do.

So I went to DC, through all the muties and all, the whatever else decided to ‘eff me up that day, and went straight to the Brotherhood. Cut through all the dang middlemen, get straight to the source, you know? Well DC was a warzone again, what with the Brotherhood infighting. It had stopped though, suddenly and without warning, and the streets of DC were quiet. I remember feeling uneasy about it. I finally found them holed up in the Citadel, even the red ones. Something was off, but I didn’t give a damn. Getting water for Lucy, that was something I could do.

They offered me water in exchange for hired muscle. Like an idiot, I agreed. I was part of a team of mercs, some of them I had done less savory work with before, some looked more like raiders than anything. We were all men and led by one of the reds’ officers, some Paladin. They called the job a supply run. Didn’t know why they needed mercs for that, but hey, they were giving me good water so who cared. We went to some settlement built out of a fallen building. Not many people there, and it looked like it had seen better days. Like the rest of us, they were hurting bad for the pure water we had become accustomed to. Being in the worst of the Wasteland, they were getting the worst of the water. Many were dead or dying from it.

That, that even we could see just looking at them as the red Paladin spoke to some scruffy looking scavver. The conversation between them wasn’t long, and after it a few bottles of precious Aqua Pura switched hands. I remember being taken aback by it at first, as I was working for the jerks and I wasn’t getting any until the job was done. But then the scavver went into his tent and brought out what must’ve been his wife. She was just as scruffy looking as he was, if not more. She was quiet. A little girl clung to her ankles, giggling at being dragged about. Another child, an older boy, looked somberly on from the door. I thought of Lucy and Duncan at the sight. I wanted to see them for some reason, then, so much so my heart ached with it. But I brushed it off and focused on the job. We left the settlement, undoubtedly to move to the next one. I wondered, absently, what kind of supplies we were trying to get. Or were we just giving them away? But no, the merchants weren’t getting any. What gives, I thought to myself, and soldiered on.

The woman and her girl followed us. When we got far enough from their settlement, the girl got scared and started crying. Wailing. Made me think of Lucy back home, across the Potomac and far away from all this. Was she crying for me, about having to raise Duncan and the next kid all on her own, run the farm, while I was trying to run from it all? That little girl crying reminded me of all of this and I needed it to stop, immediately. The annoyed Paladin shouting back another order to quit it just made it more official.

So I bent down to the girl, remembering Lucy’s tricks to make Duncan calm from his frequent toddler rages. Puffing out my cheeks, funny faces, the whole thing. Probably made myself look like an a— like an idiot to the other mercs, but who cares? I needed that girl to stop crying before I did too. She thankfully got to laughing then at me, and it was better then. When I stood and went to move back to spot in formation, the mother spat at me. She called me cruel.

 _Hold me close, never let me go_  
_Hold me close, melt my heart like April snow_

I shrugged it off, thinking it was just her being naggy or crabby or something, and went back to my position. When we stopped for the night, and the woman and her child were still following us, I asked why she was there. The merc I asked, a really shady guy called Neil I had run a heist with a few years back, had instead of answering me, given me a cigarette. He asked me about how my wife was doing, if she had had her kid or not. For what I later learned to be good reason, something in my gut told me I shouldn’t answer him. Something was off. But I wanted to know, so I told him. Duncan was as healthy as can be, and a second was on the way. Lucy couldn’t have literal sh— crap water, so here I was. Neil just nodded over his cigarette and never answered me. But at that point, I had got to thinking about her and him and nothing else really mattered anymore.

Suddenly I just wanted the job to be over so I could go home. I thought seriously about just doing what Lucy told me. Settle down. For good, stop doing godda— gosh-dang merc work, farm the earth and be a father, a husband.

The next morning we were off to the next settlement and the Paladin talked to two more men. The first was a filthy old man, so old I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had dropped dead from a fart right then and there. The red Paladin gave him three bottles of water and the old man brought out a woman with only one arm. One of many of his women, if what I saw through the open door was right, and most were in similar condition. She was despondent and wouldn’t answer our questions, but sidled over to our woman and her girl. We left the old man and his women, despite the pleading looks they gave us. The Paladin did nothing and neither did we. As we walked I looked back to the women that followed us. They must have been good friends or something, I had thought, because they held their hands so hard their knuckles were white.

The next house was more of a tent than anything, and the Paladin talked to this guy who looked like a literal greaseball. Balding and fat, covered in grime, chewing on some sort of leaf as he listened to the Paladin. He accepted ten bottles of Aqua Pura with a toothless smile and parted the flap of his tent. Inside was a teenage girl, so young she wouldn’t even be a mungo by Little Lamplight standards, if she had had the luck to be with us. She screamed at the sight of the Paladin.

He dragged her out kicking and screaming by the hair.

I really wanted out of the job after that, after I realized what it was. When we were ordered to shackle her to the other women, the little girl. When we herded them into the gates of the Citadel. For my work, I was given five bottles of Aqua Pura, half of what we had bought a teenage girl for, and a sack fat and heavy with caps. I remember clearly walking home the weight of those caps, that water that felt so tainted with the mark of Brotherhood upon it, the stain of what I had witnessed. Of what I had done. What I had stupidly told that, that fucker Neil! I remember then throwing them all in a dumpster and breaking into a sprint.

Lucy and Duncan were sleeping when I burst through the door, nearly out of breath and muscles screaming from running for miles without rest. We have to leave, I remember saying, packing up what little we had in a suitcase in a frenzy, we have to go. Lucy, after she had woken and seen the look on my face, the terror, she didn’t question. She gathered up Duncan, carried him in her thin arms above her massive belly, and followed me as we ran from the place that had been our home. A light appeared in the sky in the distance, growing bigger. I knew immediately what it was and told Lucy and Duncan to stay quiet and hide in the far end of our razorgrain fields.

I watched with a sinking heart as the vertibird landed outside our homestead, armored men in red and silver milling about. They kicked open the door when no one answered, began searching when they couldn’t find us. Their headlamps were approaching. I don’t know how, I can’t remember from the adrenaline and panic in that moment, but we got past them, only shot at once or twice, and away. Though I’d like to say far away. The Wasteland was too empty to evade sight by their Vertibirds, ironically our only safe haven was among the ruins of DC. I hated the idea of having to go closer to them to get away from them, but there weren’t too many options.

We took the metro system to evade notice, and maybe, flee the Wasteland. To what lengths would the Brotherhood search for us?

 _I'll love you 'til the bluebells forget to bloom_  
_I'll love you 'til the clover has lost its perfume_

Well, we never found out. The Metros were something both taken and avoided by many. In the days before the Brotherhood change in leadership, well. There had been patrols to clear out feral nests and mutant hives. Not anymore.

All the routes I had learned over the years through my merc jobs, none panned out. We got lost in the dark twists and turns, we got blocked by locked gates or train cars scattered or busted to hell by explosions or who knows what horrors that walked these tunnels. Sometimes tunnels carried the echoes of the laughter of drugged-up raider gangs, others the freaky shouting of super mutants. Hours passed, or minutes that felt like it, I don’t know. But we were lost in the metro and we were at our wit’s end.

It got dark again, and Duncan was hungry. When he began to cry, it carried loud and long through the tunnels. It was shrill and it near made my heart stop. Lucy did her best to make him stop, but he was inconsolable. He wouldn’t stop fucking crying, and when I heard the scrambling and the shuffling of feet I knew soon we’d all be. I yelled at them to hide and we do, in a subway car. This horde of ferals, more than I’ve seen in my entire goddamn life, come running down the tunnel searching for us. There’s like, thirty. Fifty. I don’t even know how many, but all I’ve got is this stupid fucking hunting rifle from my Little Lamplight days on me. My arsenal’s back at the house, which is swarming with Brotherhood sons of bitches and now there’s a bunch of ferals between me and them, so I’m fucked. The thing’s a rusty bolt-action and I’d maybe manage to gun down two or three before we’re torn apart. They’re slowing now, following the echo, but they don’t know where we’ve gone. Fucking miracle, that.

I tell Lucy to sneak down the car, past the ghouls and down the tunnel. I’d stall them here and follow them. I knew I could outrun them, and I’d distract them from Lucy and Duncan, who were slow. It’s a fucking dumb-ass plan, but it’s the only one I’ve got, okay? I tell her to run, I push her when she tries to say no. She has to, for our kids. A ghoul hears us, starts walking towards us through the darkness. Its face, its disgusting-ass face freaks out Duncan and he starts screaming again. Lucy clamps a hand on his mouth but it’s not enough. She runs off at a sprint, but she’s so pregnant she’s waddling and straining with the effort of it.

Fuck, fuck, fuck it all!

I slam a leg bone from a nearby skeleton into the handles of the subway door and smash open a window with my elbow. I start firing at the ghouls trying to get in at me, one by one, I fire at their fucking heads. They explode, bloody and wet and they fall to the ground. For every one I shoot there’s two more and the bone won’t hold forever. I hear Duncan still fucking screaming and it’s so much louder here in the tunnels, I can hear it it’s so fucking loud in my ears it hurts, but I keep firing. As fast as I can I keep firing, and the bone creaks with a sickening snap. God, they’re breaking through and—

They scramble over each other for me, for flesh, and I keep firing as I run, I have to. They can’t reach Lucy, they can’t reach Duncan. I need to fucking stop them or I have to distract them from the screaming from my wailing little boy or something, anything, but god damn it I can’t! One runs past me, then two. I turn and sprint past them, punching them or kicking them in the back of their melted legs to trip them. But it’s not enough, it’s not enough!

I catch up to Lucy, and thankfully I’m still ahead of the ghouls. But her hair’s sticking to her face from the sweat, her face strained from the exertion of the running, from carrying Duncan. She looks about ready to collapse, but still when she sees me she gives me one of her smiles. It’s tired and weary from the pain from the running, from fear of the ghouls, but still. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and the sight of it is burned like a brand into my fucking brain.

 _I'll love you 'til the poets run out of rhyme_  
_Until the Twelfth of Never and that's a long, long time_

She trips then, a ghoul has her. She yelps at it bites at her. Duncan falls out of her hands and to the ground, hitting his head on the concrete. Immediately, he’s quiet. So quiet I can feel, I can hear, my heart drop. I scream, everything’s falling apart. My body burns with adrenaline, with fear, with everything as I scoop up Duncan and kick the ghoul in the face. But there are five more behind them running faster than I can shoot them and their mouths slobbering with hunger, and who knows how many behind them. I can’t see for shit anymore anyway, there are too many tears.

She sees them too, looking back, and she tells me to run.

Lucy, I can’t just leave you! I can’t leave you to die! Lucy! I’m screaming at her, crying freely now, I can’t stop it. Thinking about it now, looking back, I feel it again. God dammit.

She tells me to save Duncan.

I don’t know how I managed to escape the Metro with Duncan, unconscious in my arms, or how I found myself at a farm north of the Capital. Lucy wasn’t there. She still hasn’t come back, in these years, though part of me still wants her to come back to me. I never told her that I loved her, not even as she left herself for the ghouls. More than anything, I want to tell her that.

I… I want to tell you that.

Duncan’s four now, and I’ve sworn to be better for him, but shit, it’s so fucking hard without you. He needs a father to be there for him and he keeps asking where his mother is, fuck, he can’t remember your face anymore, Lucy! He doesn’t remember the Metro, thank god, but he can’t forget you. Fuck, I can’t forget you.

And now he’s coming down with something real weird and I don’t know what to do. He’s, he’s sick. He’s coughing and he’s covered in these blue boils and it’s scaring me to death, the doctors I’ve talked to and wasted all my fucking caps on don’t know anything. Lucy! Lucy, I can’t… I don’t know what to do. Where ever you are, just, just help me. Please. I can’t lose him, too, not after losing you.

I’ve heard about all the tech in the Commonwealth, I’ve seen it. Before the war that’s where all the egg-heads went, right? There might be something there, some medicine or something, that might be able to help him. I’m thinking of leaving him here in the care of this family I’ve been a farmhand for the past year or so. Don’t worry, they’re good people and I think I can trust them. If not, I’ve given them a fuckton of caps to keep him safe until I can find a cure for him.

_Until the Twelfth of Never and that's a long, long time_

But anyway, the caravan I’m leaving with is calling for me. They’ll leave if I don’t go— well, and I’m sick of hearing that fuck— freaking Brotherhood sellout Three Dog anyway. Why didn’t I turn off that damn radio before I started recording… and what’s with this song anyway?  So terrible, making my eyes water...

Shit, I said all that while I was recording? I meant to make something for Duncan for when he was old enough, if I didn’t come back, to remember his old man— but, f-freakin’ heck, this stuff is utter shit. Said too much. You’d be better at this, Lucy.  I’ll have to wipe this later, I think.

Anyway, I’m headed out so I guess this is goodbye, huh? I already told Duncan but I guess I should tell you too. Leaving you two and the Wasteland behind…

Good-bye, Lucy. I… I love you.

_[static.]_

**Author's Note:**

> ***** TW: ghoul attack, institutionalized misogyny and slavery, language *****
> 
> I had meant for this to be short and succinct and an exploration of MacCready, just a sort of 'oh, that happened, heck', but MacCready ran away from me and I ended up writing waaaaay more. It also got really intense? MacCready talks a lot in-game about how much he wants to do for Duncan and is really self-deprecating when he talks about him and Lucy, and how he wants to be better. I really wanted to capture how he might have felt about it then and what he might have gone through to feel that way, and it ended up being really, really... oof. I think that's the right word for it.
> 
> But anyway, I hope you enjoyed! Thank you so much for reading! If you've got any comments, questions or critiques please leave them and I'd be happy to answer them as soon as I can!
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at : http://sneakywitch-thief.tumblr.com/


End file.
